Romantic Relationship Trajectories: Correlates and Consequences for Marital Quality among Low-Income Couples
Year: 2010
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Through the Healthy Marriage Initiative, the U.S. government promotes marital quality among low-income persons despite a lack of knowledge about marital quality and its predictors among the target population.Little is known about how couples' romantic relationship trajectories may impact marital quality, even with profound variation in ways couples form unions.To investigate this lacuna, I address four research aims using data from 399 low-income married couples in the Marriage and Relationship Survey.My first two research aims offer new knowledge on low-income couples' romantic relationship trajectories and their predictors.First, I describe the sequencing of four events following the start of the dating relationship: sex, cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing.I differentiate couples into four mutually exclusive groups: (1) "traditional" couples, who neither cohabited nor had sex prior to marriage; (2) "traditional-plus-sex" couples, who did engage in premarital sex, but did not cohabit before marriage; (3) "modern" couples, who engaged in premarital sex and cohabited prior marrying; and (4) "unconventional" couples, who, besides premarital sex and cohabitation, also experienced premarital joint parenthood.I then describe couples' relationship spacing, i.e., the time separating: (1) dating and marriage; (2) dating and first sex; (3) dating and cohabitation; (4) cohabitation and marriage; and (5) marriage and the postmarital birth of the couples' first child.I find genuinely different romantic relationship trajectories, with 2000).Children benefit from their parents' healthy marriage both directly and indirectly with better physical and emotional health, economic well-being, academic achievement, and more successful interpersonal relationships (Amato 2005; Amato and Booth 1997; Manning and Lichter 1996).The rationale for marriage promotion is to reduce reliance on government benefits, including welfare, health care, and mental health-care services (U.S.Department of Health and Human Services 2009).Consequently, healthy marriage initiatives are emphasized in programs serving low-income populations, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families services, Children's Bureau, and Community Services (Fein and Ooms 2006).Given the government's aim to promote healthy marriages, we need to know more about marital quality and its predictors, particularly among the lowincome population (Fein 2004;Moore et al. 2007).Below, I review the literature on marital quality among low-income couples. MARITAL QUALITY AMONG LOW-INCOME COUPLESEconomically disadvantaged Americans are less likely to enjoy the benefits that marriage provides to adults and their children.First, poor individuals are less likely to get married (McLaughlin and Lichter 1997;Schoen and Cheng 2006;Smock, Manning, and Porter 2005;Sweeney 2002).Recent data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) reveal that 64 percent of women with family incomes of less than $25,000 marry by age 30, compared to 83 percent of women with family incomes of $50,000 or more (Bramlett and Mosher 2002).
Author: Margaret A. Gassanov
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2247779643